Bangladesh is the world’s seventh-largest producer of potatoes. Most of the crop is grown by small-holder farmers.

Farmers harvest potatoes in the Chuadanga District of Bangladesh. Photo by Md.Arif Hossain

Akhter Hossain, a 46-year-old married father of three in the Chuadanga District, is one of them. He estimates that about 40 percent of the farmers in his area are engaged in potato cultivation, along with growing other cash crops.

The cultivation of genetically engineered (GMO) crops hit record levels in 2016, with 18 million farmers planting 185.1 million hectares of biotech crops globally, making it the fastest adopted crop technology in recent times, according to a new report.

Motlatsi Musi has followed a rough road to farming. Made homeless by South Africa’s apartheid practices in the 1960s, he landed a job as a permanent laborer on a large farm, where he gained a wealth of experience. But it wasn’t until apartheid ended that he could get a place of his own.

Stakeholders in the agricultural biotechnology sector are offering assurances that the problems that prompted Burkina Faso to temporarily halt cultivation of genetically engineered cotton won’t be repeated with GMO crops in other African countries.